


Oilslick Feathers

by sylveondreams



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attack, Pre-Apocalypse, Wings, pollution fucks shit up, shit in this case being crowley's wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 15:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19466500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylveondreams/pseuds/sylveondreams
Summary: After an unexpected encounter with Pollution, Crowley finds himself with wings soaked in oil and panic building in his chest.





	Oilslick Feathers

The cargo ship _Sea Devil_ was on course in the North Atlantic, bound for a little port on the Canadian island of Newfoundland, where it would drop off several dozen barrels of oil to be transported elsewhere in the province. On board the ship was the demon Crowley, who lurked among the crates of barrels of oil, bored out of his mind. He couldn't even light a fire to entertain himself, for Satan's sake. It was just that the angel Aziraphale, with whom he was well acquainted, to say the least, was currently settled in a small rental cottage in the port town and had been for a few months by now, and Crowley missed him. And sometimes he made split-second decisions to board a blasted _ship_ instead of an airplane. He'd been trying to figure out why he'd made this decision for the past several days.

Crowley hadn't met any of the crew, and that was just fine by him. They wouldn't take well to a strange man lurking in the dark areas of the ship. But they were only about six hours away from landing in the port, and it was time for a member of the crew to do a cursory inspection, just in case there was anything wrong with the cargo they hadn't seen through the cameras.

Crewman P. Ashton was the man for the job, well, the person for the job, since they never seemed to mind wandering amongst the cargo, fixing their sharp gaze on the containers one by one to make sure there wasn't a leaky barrel of oil in any of them. That was their job, anyway. Ashton preferred to inspect the containers to make sure there _was_ a small stream of oil trickling from the corner of a majority of the containers. They preferred this ship to a normal tanker because it didn't make any sense. It transported barrels of oil intended for wholesale to places all over the globe, which provided more oil-soaked metal that most companies just threw away.

Crowley sprawled inside a container, taking a nap on some of the barrels in the relative darkness of the metal crate. The door was ajar, and as far as Crowley was concerned, always had been. He didn't expect trouble with opening a shipping container, so the container didn't give him any.

Ashton's boots were loud against the walkway as they paced down the row of crates, casting an eye across all of them. Their gaze lit on one labeled AZ-46747805, whose door was ajar. That wasn't right. They raised their nose slightly and sniffed, as if they could make out what was inside.

Perhaps they could.

The door swung open as Ashton approached, revealing yellow eyes squinting at the sudden light.

"Oh," said a voice, muddled with recent sleep. "You. Pollution. I should've guessed you'd be on a ship like this, if you were anywhere at all."

Pollution smiled, the expression not quite reaching their empty eyes. "Me."

"Am I going to be able to reach Newfoundland on this ship?" Crowley sat up on one barrel, propping his feet on the door of the container.

Pollution smiled a little bit wider, the expression still not reaching their eyes. (It never did.) "Yes. This ship won't breach for another year, and by then it will be carrying non-recyclable plastics that will float in the ocean for years to come. I'm biding my time. I wasn't expecting to see you here. I haven't seen a demon in all of my time on Earth, and I wasn't expecting to until-" They waved a hand to indicate the Apocalypse, and a tiny leak opened in a barrel twenty yards away, dripping crude oil onto the barrel below. "Nor an angel. I got the idea we weren't supposed to meet."

"Right. Well. Can I go back to sleep?"

"Not yet. The top of that barrel is fragile."

As if on cue, the lid of the barrel Crowley was sitting on, which had slowly been corroding away from the inside for the past several months, collapsed, sending him plunging into dark oil, kicking and sputtering. By the time Crowley had dragged himself from the oil, splashing rather a lot of it everywhere, Pollution was gone.

Crowley, disgruntled, snapped his fingers to clean up the mess and sauntered out of the shipping container like a man who'd just been dunked in crude oil and would prefer to forget about it.

On a hill some ways away from a small port town in Newfoundland, an angel and a demon picked their way up an overgrown path to the summit, gravel crumbling away under their feet. The air was crisp, and the sky was a cool, cloudless blue.

Aziraphale was talking, and Crowley was watching the back of his head, barely listening but enthralled in the angel nonetheless. Sunlight bounced through the fuzzy ends of Aziraphale's hair, making him appear to glow with heavenly light as he took careful steps on the loose gravel.

"...but he's really a good man, Crowley. I can't imagine _why_ I was sent here. It mustn't have just been for him. There's barely anything else I _can_ do."

"Hmm. Yes, quite." Crowley's foot slipped, and he shot an intense glare at the rocks below his foot until they realized what was good for them.

"I've been doing miracles while I've been here, of course, healing the odd illness, making sure everyone comes home safe from sea, but watching over a man who's been released from prison seems like a strange job. He was never a bad person, Crowley, just unfortunate." The angel's feet landed on packed earth and grass, the top of the hill. He took a deep breath and looked out over the field. "Canada's beautiful. We should visit here sometime. For a holiday."

"Demons don't _get_ holiday, Aziraphale." Crowley stopped next to him and closed his eyes, breathing in the clean air.

"Neither do angels, my dear. Someday." White wings unfolded from behind Aziraphale, stretching up to catch the breeze in gleaming feathers. "I imagine we'll find the time someday."

Crowley unfolded his wings as well, and the wind picked up. His feathers were heavy and unresponsive, catching the wind and threatening to drag him backwards instead of tilting to allow it to breeze over them. Suddenly, he felt trapped, and he shook his wings violently, feeling their suddenly heavy weight yank him back and forth indelicately. His breath caught in his throat.

"Crowley? Crowley, calm down!" Aziraphale put a hand out, not quite touching the demon, worry painted across his face.

"I can't fly, Aziraphale, there's something wrong with my wings!" Crowley heard the panic in his voice and did nothing to tamp it down, the feeling of being grounded heavy on his soul. This was what so many of the other demons must feel like, with their ruined wings. Crowley had clung to them for so long, his perfect and unbroken wings-

"Stop flapping!" Aziraphale said sharply. Flecks of black had appeared on his face and wings. "I think there's something on your wings."

Crowley tried to take a deep breath and stopped moving, but his breaths were shallow and fast and he didn't think he could stay still for long.

Aziraphale circled him to examine his wings, putting a finger out to stroke them and coming away with dark goop on it. He frowned. "This is oil, my dear. How did you get oil on your wings?"

Crowley growled and snapped his wings out wide, seeing for the first time the rainbow sheen of dark oil on his feathers. "On the ship. A barrel broke. I fell in." He didn't mention Pollution. The horseman was already almost erased from his memory of the occasion.

The angel raised an eyebrow. "Unlucky."

"My wings must have flashed out as I fell in," Crowley said hesitantly, unsure about this assessment of the situation. Surely, he would have noticed. His chest was still tight, but less fear paralyzed him than before. This wasn't delayed divine punishment, it was only oil. But the heaviness of his wings still scared him, urging him to flap them until he took off and could prove to himself that _he was in control_.

"Do you want to return to my place and wash them off?"

"I can't- I can't put them away, angel. I'll know."

Aziraphale nodded and reached out for Crowley's wings, passing his hands over them until the heaviness was gone and his feathers shone with their usual luster. Crowley stretched his wings to the sky, feeling the wind ruffle through them, and finally managed to take a deep breath.

"Thank you, angel. I-" No, he couldn't say that. "Thank you." He beat his wings once, twice, and lifted off, gliding in a low loop above Aziraphale's head. The feeling of the wind on his face was freeing, and the tightness in his chest melted away.

White feathers took to the sky, too, brushing past his as the angel ascended high into the sky. Crowley tilted his wings and followed, soaring up to look over the countryside of Newfoundland and the ocean beyond the town. The demon would never admit it, but he felt like flying took him closer to God. He could see over all of what She'd created, and seeing that almost made him wish he could be forgiven. If he couldn't fly, well...

Back in Aziraphale's rooms, Crowley draped his jacket on a chair and let his wings spread out again, relishing the memory of flying with the angel again.

Aziraphale pushed gently past his outstretched feathers to enter the room, quickly looking over them for any remaining drops of oil. Satisfied, he sank down on the armchair with Crowley's jacket and watched as the demon sat on the bed and began to preen, running his fingers through his wings to knock off any loose feathers.

"You know, Crowley, I think your wings are really very beautiful," Aziraphale finally said.

Crowley snorted and continued preening in silence.

"You looked so happy flying. Why don't you do it more often?"

"I don't want to talk about it," said Crowley quietly, plucking a loose feather between his fingers. "You wouldn't understand."

"I'm here for you, my dear."

Crowley mumbled something about God and plucked another feather.

Aziraphale hummed, barely having heard any of what Crowley had just said.

"I said, it makes me feel too close to God. I'm not part of Her flock anymore. She cast me down. I don't think I'm worthy of seeing that much of Her creation anymore. I want to look over all of it, angel."

"Then why did you react like that when the oil was on your wings?"

Crowley didn't answer, focusing intently on his feathers.

Aziraphale breathed in sharply. "Oh! Hope."

The demon cast a glare at him. "I don't hope. There's no hope for me. I'm unforgivable. I just don't want to be land-bound. It's the rebellion of seeing Her creation from such a height, even having been cast down. Or whatever." Crowley hadn't lied about why he didn't fly, but _this_ was a lie. Somewhere deep within, Crowley still believed that God loved him. In Her own way. He'd barely heard of anyone speaking to Her directly since well before the Fall, and deep inside himself he believed that demons were just meant to be that way, and the Almighty still loved them as much as any of Her other creations. But this went against 6000 years of angelic and infernal belief, and so Crowley would never admit to himself, or anyone else, that this was the case. Besides, it was better to be away from those bastards in Heaven.

The reason the demon had panicked when his wings hadn't worked was because he feared the loss of control. It felt like Heaven again, like the stifling authority who wouldn't let him do as he pleased, and it felt like it had when he Fell, his wings beating helplessly, catching no air, unable to fly back up and away from the scorching flames below.

"Oh, Crowley. I'm sorry." Before Crowley could react, Aziraphale was on his feet and wiping a tear Crowley hadn't even known he had from the demon's cheek. "I didn't mean to make you upset."

"I'm not upset," said Crowley in a voice tinged with impending tears, and he fell back onto the bed, his wings folding back out of sight.

The slope of the mattress shifted underneath as Aziraphale laid down next to him. "Well, I'm glad you came to see me, my dear." The angel's voice was quiet. "I... I missed you."

"We talked on the phone, angel." Like Aziraphale had probably intended, the tears welling in Crowley's eyes dried up, distracted from his thoughts.

"It isn't the same."

Crowley turned over to face Aziraphale, and, _completely by coincidence_ , one of his hands landed atop the angel's and neglected to move from there. "I missed you, too. That's why I'm here."

"No temptation?"

"Dinner?"

The corner of Aziraphale's mouth rose in a smile. "Hardly your most difficult temptation."

Crowley moved a little bit closer to the angel, drinking in his warmth. "Lie right here, with me."

"For how long?" His voice was soft.

"Until dinner, of course." Crowley smiled back at him. A hand reached up to take off the demon's glasses, and soft brown eyes looked into his, the subtle light of angelic love gleaming from their depths.

Crowley suddenly ached to kiss the angel, to feel his grace on his lips, but something inside him told him that it wasn't time yet. Instead, he moved closer, closer, until Aziraphale's arm went over his waist and their hands, now tightly clasped together, were trapped between them. Crowley relaxed completely into Aziraphale, letting the angel's warmth fill his entire body and letting the arm over his waist hold him close.

Slowly, Crowley's eyes drifted shut, lulled to sleep by the warmth and caring Aziraphale radiated, and, just before he succumbed completely, soft lips pressed gently against his forehead, flooding him with peace and a blessing of good dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr at [sylveondreams](http://sylveondreams.tumblr.com)!


End file.
